Abstract:

The implementation of the Virtual Learning Environment for non-university education in Andalusia, a Spanish region with more than 8 million inhabitants, which educational community consists of over 2 million people (teachers, students and families), in a very heterogeneous scenario, encompassing geography, socio-economy and technology is a true challenge, that needs to be addressed in a holistic context to grant success.

The objective of the DG for Teacher Training and Educational Innovation (DGFPIE) of the Ministry of Education and Sports (CED) is the consolidation of the Digital Educational Transformation in Andalusia (TDE), focusing on the optimisation of services to make the best use of the resources.

The project is fully aligned with the EU’s Digital Education Action Plan, upon a global, collaborative and inclusive approach, making emphasis in granting universal access to resources and services to the whole Educational Community on a digital basis.

The relevance of the project is given by its comprehensive vision around three action lines that consolidate the TDE ecosystem of the DGFPIE, addressed to the whole Educational sector thanks to the promoting and leading role of the Public Administration:
• Improving the use of digital technology in teaching-learning processes
• Developing digital competencies and skills relevant to the educational community
• Promoting the improvement of school results and reduction of dropout through Big Data (BD), Learning Analytics (LA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The methodologies applied cover technological, implementation and dissemination aspects, from gap analysis and design thinking to SCRUM, ITIL and PMP, on a Lean IT basis.

The result, the “Andalusian Digital Education Ecosystem” is a personalized teaching-learning environment for any member of the Educational Community, that provides single access to a digital classroom, integrated with the backoffice management system, allowing class organization, planning and synchronous collaboration, where the educational content is provided by publishers and by a corporate open educational Resources Bank (LOR).

The pedagogical support is completed with services to promote the digital training of students, families and teachers through a MOOC, MoocEdu, fully aligned with the DigCompX frameworks. A Digital Proficiency Test is included to diagnose the user skills and stablish a starting point, recommending training actions to achieve the defined objectives.

Through this access point, schools benefit from facilities to collaborate which include a vast community of school blogs and classroom spaces, BlogsAverroes, ever growing to support communication needs for the community.

AI allows the provision of a Pedagogical Assessment Service, a personalized and contextualized educational reinforcement for the students through recommendations of itineraries, contents, tasks and/or readings adapted to their academic situation, which consider information related to the characteristics of their teachers, their socioeconomic context and their academic performance, among others.

The key success factors, after conclusions reinforced by the recent needs arising from the COVID-19 crisis, are: focus on users and services; public leadership; universal access; single entry point to any services, resources, collaboration and communication facilities for teachers, students and families within the teaching-learning paradigm; scalability and agility to adapt services.

Keywords:

ICT and Digital Skills, Digital yibraries and repositories, universal Access, building virtual communities, open Learning.